Thursday, October 15, 2009

Shawty Get It In, Rachel Go Hard

Rachel Maddow straight melted Tim Phillips' face tonight on her show. She didn't have to yell scream and holla either. She just told this cat to his face EXACTLY how she felt about him after she exposed his sleazy ways. Damn, I need a cigarette!

I respectfully disagree. What Rachel is doing is pulling back the veil and exposing tht the great and powerful OZ is really just a paid scumbag who doesn't give a damn about anything but his bank account. Yes he spews his talking points but it is so obvious that they ARE talking points compared to what she is bringing to the table that its not even funny. Anybody who was willing to give AFP the benefit of the doubt won't be doing so after seeing that interview and FINALLY after all this time somebody held Phillips accountable for that contemptible Cleland ad. That for me was well worth the interview in and of itself.

I don't know. I was a bit disappointed. She let him slide on a little too much for my taste. For example, when he tried to create a false equivalency between his group and the pharmaceutical lobby all Rachael had to say was that "the difference is that they're not pretending to be a grassroots organization. No one's saying you can't work for your cause." And did he really try to define his organization as grassroots because ordinary people showed up to their events? Should have been a flag on that play and shit. I mean, that'd be like Miley Cyrus saying she's an independent artist because the kids that go to her concerts don't have record contracts. And the one that really got me was when she brought up the thing about the Chinese workers and he tried to make some excuse about having a long career. And how he shouldn't be held to every little incidence of supporting sexual slavery any more than Rachael should be held to every statement she's made on her show. All she had to say was "if someone showed me that I had been advocating subjecting people to sexual slavery on the grounds that they might come across a Bible in the process, I'd be the first to apologize for it." I don't know. Shit just bothered me. I just can't stand these fools.

Here is what I would say to that. We tend to look at these interview with our own eyes instead of the eyes of someone who needs to be swayed one way or another. We already know that Phillips is a scumbag so we don't want Rachel to give him any opening or slack on anything he says at all. That is fine as far as it goes but the technique she employs makes her look like a much fairer interviewer than say a Hannity or an O'Reilly who simply shout people down and stifle their dissent.

But by the same token the blows that she lands are powerful. Even as Phillips tries to explain everything away in his "long career" a person who didn't know who he was would be appalled about the Cleland ad and about how he is paid to basically say anything about anybody no matter how reprehensible. For all of his trying to look respectable and calm I don't think the average person who is in the middle would see him that way after this interview. And at the end when she lays it all out on the line and lets him have it most folks will see and feel the true disgust she has for him. And she did it all without losing her cool or her temper and still thanked him for coming to be interviewed.

Now like I said, I feel where you are coming from. We would like for her to have just called him out for every lie and every false equivocation but watch it again and dig how she focuses on just a few serious incidents and does not allow him to change the topic until he acknowledges what she is talking about. I can promise you that if you send that video around to family and friends of yours that don't follow politics a lot they will come away looking at Phillips like the scumbag that he is.

I'm not saying she should have been rude or tried to talk over him on some Hannity shit. I wasn't talking about technique. I just think she missed some easy points she could have and should have made. I mean, she didn't need to be any less civil to point out that he was trying to establish a false equivalency in comparing his organization to another lobbying group. All I was saying was that I was disappointed that she allowed him to get away with as much as she did. But I do take your point about perspective. Yeah, we already know this guy is a parasite. We didn't need Rachael to tell us. And I suppose if you'd only heard about him from this interview, you'd probably be well on your way to being persuaded that he's the amoral slimeball we know him to be. And I suppose, at the end of the day, that's more important than satisfying the rhetorical bloodlust of people that already agree with you.